1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains in general to data visualization on a computer and, in particular, to ways of representing data obtained from web pages and other sources.
2. Description of the Related Art
The development of information retrieval systems has predominantly focused on improving the overall usefulness of the search results presented to the user. Information retrieval systems, or ‘search engines’ in the context of the Internet and World Wide Web, use a wide variety of techniques to improve the usefulness of the search results. These techniques address many aspects of search engine design, from the basic indexing methods and document representation, through query analysis and modification, to relevance ranking and result presentation, methodologies too numerous to fully catalog here.
Specifically, various methods are used to organize the results of the search for presentation to the user. Search results can be displayed in order, for example, according to a relevancy determination given the initial search parameters, in chronological order, or according to proximity to a particular geographic location. Typically, search results are a list of links to web pages where relevant information can be found. Each webpage with relevant information is typically represented once in the list of search results, regardless of the amount of information presented.